Rail safety experts in Canada and the United States have repeatedly warned that the 111A tanker car is spill-prone.

Traditional rail tanker cars such as those that derailed and burned in Lac Mégantic have been regarded as unsafe since the 1990s. (July 7, 2013)

By:Keith Stewart Published on Tue Jul 09 2013

Trains are important to my family. My grandfather drove the first diesel train through the Canadian Rockies and my dad built a to-scale model of the Jasper train station in our basement.

So I like the fact that there is a rail line half a block from my house, even when I get stuck waiting for a train to pass while walking my son to school. But even before the horrific disaster in Lac Mégantic, I was becoming concerned about the rail cars I saw trundling past us every morning.

When my son started school in 2008, none of the rail cars would have been carrying oil. Now a lot of them do, with over 70 per cent of it in an older model of tanker car that the government’s own safety experts say is unsafe.

Starting about five years ago, oil companies started to ship significant quantities of oil by rail from the rapidly growing Alberta tarsands operations and from shale oil fracking in North Dakota. Between 2011 and 2012, the amount of oil shipped by rail tripled, so that it accounted for 2 per cent of our oil exports. That amount is expected to double again in 2013.

When I started researching oil on rail, I was concerned about how it was facilitating the expansion of the tarsands, which were already the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada.

Climate change is by far the biggest threat to my children’s future and it is the reason why I work at Greenpeace. We desperately need to invest in a transition from oil and other fossil fuels if we are to avoid dangerous levels of global warming.

As we make the transition to clean energy, we should ensure that the old, dirty energy system is as safe as it can be. And both our pipeline and rail systems can and should be a lot safer than they are today.

When it comes to rail, there are concerns over staff cutbacks and the increased wear-and-tear on the tracks from heavy cars loaded with oil. But there is also a major problem with the type of tanker car used to transport the bulk of the oil.

In both the U.S. and Canada, the government’s own safety experts have consistently warned since the 1990s that the old “111A” tanker cars that carry the bulk of dangerous liquids are unsafe.

Time and again, they have advised the federal government that these cars are spill-prone. And when there is a spill from a train derailment, there is a good chance that flammable liquids will catch fire and possibly explode.

In a bluntly worded report on a 2009 spill from a CN train, Canada’s Transportation Safety Board wrote: “The susceptibility of 111A tank cars to release product at derailment and impact is well documented. The transport of a variety of the most hazardous products in such cars continues.”

The policy response has been that rail companies can no longer build new cars on that old design, but they can continue to use the old ones with their multiple “safety deficiencies.” In short, the federal government has prioritized keeping costs low for oil and rail companies over public safety.

This should be unacceptable.

As a start, the federal government should ban the transport of oil in the older, unsafe rail tanker cars and launch a comprehensive review of the safety of the way we move oil in both our pipeline and rail systems.

But even if the oil gets to its destination safely, it will then be burned in a way that fuels global warming. So the only real long-term solution is to accelerate the transition to a green energy system. That will take decades, but we must start today.

Keith Stewart is the climate and energy campaign co-ordinator for Greenpeace Canada. He also teaches a course on energy policy and the environment at the University of Toronto.

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